Tindersticks' Stuart Staples on Claire Denis, Kendrick Lamar, Neil Young, and Committing to Vinyl

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I first heard Tindersticks when I was writing copy for a personalized sports memorabilia website back in 2005; my boss wouldn't let me wear headphones and listen to my iPod so I made him listen to an internet radio station comprised entirely of indie rock, and every time a Tindersticks song appeared I'd go, "Man, that sounds good." Still, it took me a minute to become a full-blown fan—2019's exquisite No Treasure But Hope was a turning point for me though, and over the last few years I've grown increasingly familiar with their extensive and impressively varied catalogue. At this point I think they're one of the most underrated indie rock bands going, and their latest album Soft Tissue (which came out last week) is no exception—so I was very happy to hop on a call with Stuart Staples right as he was rehearsing for the band's upcoming tour and talk about his incredible career. Check it out:

What is performing live like for you at this point?
To play a concert, to be with people—it's the only reality about making music, I think. You can sit in studios for years, and it's an abstract process—but when you share with people, everything can become real. Even the role of a musician or songwriter can be brought into focus—whereas, when you're on your own in a studio, none of that makes any sense, really.

What do you remember about the first time you performed in front of other people?
I can remember it really vividly because it was the first time I heard my voice loud with lots of reverb on it. I was like, "Wow, that's something new." But that was back in the day of writing songs with one shitty microphone and a couple of cassette decks. There wasn't access to things like reverb when I was 16 years old. To have a bit of that in a PA system was quite something

As much as you're a songwriter, I think of you as a singer with a fairly distinctive voice as well. Tell me about when you first discovered that voice.
The singing was kind of all I had, and it still is the main thing I have to express ideas to the rest of the band, or the musicians that I work with. It's not just the front of a song, but a way to put songs together as well—to explain yourself and your ideas. At the beginning, there were glimpses. It was a certain time in my life and in the UK—I was, like, 15, it was probably 1980. I was a kid of northern England when punk came along, and it was the first music I'd heard that really talked to me in that way.

But the wave of music after it, produced all these people that I listened to all the time—whether it was obvious references like Ian Curtis, Marc Almond, Kevin Rowland. These singers, there were so many of them, and they were all like me. They came from humble backgrounds in the north of England and were able to express themselves with not much That was an invitation for people like me to see what I could do.

The new record's great, and a bit of a left turn again after Distractions, which itself was a bit of a left turn. Tell me about how this one came together.
We recorded most of it over a year ago, but this record has so much to do with the two albums before it. We made No Treasure But Hope as a way for us to come back after not being together for quite a long time. We decided to make a very pure record, and we were in a room around the piano listening to each other. It was a great experience, but it also bred a certain kind of frustration. We'd left a more curious and experimental side of us to one side, and that came back with the start of Distractions. The pandemic and confinement emphasized where it was heading, so Distractions became quite an extreme record.

When we came to just thinking about making music, I really felt that we needed to find a middle ground between these two things—the songwriting, and the scrutiny, but also some experimentation that's satisfying to us. This album definitely has that, which is what I really wanted.

Tell me more about that push-and-pull between experimenting and operating more in a straightforward way. I think of Yo La Tengo as a good analogue to what the Tindersticks catalog thus far has resembled, they definitely embrace both ends as well.
It's very difficult not to react to where you've just been—and where you've just been, you kind of want to get away from, if you know what I mean. You devote yourself to finishing an album, and when it's finished, you don't want to go back there. When we were making No Treasure But Hope, I'd just had three years of making the soundtrack for High Life—experimenting in the studio every day, working in surround sound. You feel like you're in a spaceship for eight months. Between that, the soundtrack for Minute Bodies, and my solo album Arrhythmia, it was so much time experimenting in the studio that I just wanted to play my acoustic guitar with the rest of the guys and see where the ideas took us. It's very difficult when you want to move on—to make the right decisions.

In 1999, when we made Simple Pleasure, we were turning everything we'd done before on its head. We'd made three albums that were all double album—sprawling, layered, dense, narrative records. It was like turning a tanker around to be able to make a different kind of music and think about music in a different way. But if we hadn't have done that, at that particular moment in time, I don't think we would be still making music now, and that has to do with having a bravery to turn away from something that works. That taught us a great lesson, I think. When we got back together in 2008 after not being together for, like, four years, I think the biggest thing that we all felt was just to be in the moment—to not look back, to just enjoy the music that we're making now, and the music that we can make tomorrow.

Let's talk more about that period of time in which Tindersticks were effectively on hiatus. Reflect on that period of time and what led to getting back together, which was a bit of a surprise.
It was a surprise to me too. The band kind of just slowly disintegrated, in a way. Being in a band has so much to do with collective desire. If that slips away from you, there isn't much hope to make something that's vital. Me and [band member David Boulter] were trying to be in Tindersticks three or four years before Tindersticks actually existed. So when it came to an end, it was very existential, I suppose, when it came to who we were. I suppose I needed to figure out who I was outside of Tindersticks, and that's one of the reasons I made those two solo albums—to see what I wanted to do.

[Guistarist Neil Fraser] and David pushed as gently as they would, to see what they were doing—snd what would happen. We were able to meet Dan McKinna and Tom Belhom, who played drums on The Hugnry Saw and is still a great friend of ours and an amazing musician. Then we met Al Harvin. And it's since grown into this thing that's...I'm not going to say "better," but stronger, and it doesn't really care about the past—it only cares about this moment. And I think that's something in itself, which is really powerful.

Tell me more about that act of finding yourself, and how you think you've changed as a songwriter.
When we were demoing the first album, we were in in our kitchen that myself and David and Neil shared in a house in North London. We had a four-track recorder, and we demoed the whole of the first album before we actually made it. At that time, I was working at the Rough Trade shop, and I'd get up in the morning on the subway, go to work, write a song, and I'd come home at night and I'd be literally running to get to the studio to try and record it.

When you're young, there's a whole wide world of influences in front of you, and your ears are just constantly pricked up. Working at Rough Trade when I was 25, a whole new world of influences opened up in front of me. The early '90s London scene was small, but it was so vibrant. There were so many people doing their own thing on a very small level, and that in itself opened up my mind for experimenting when writing songs. When I look back on writing a song like "Travelling Light," I understand every reference point and where it came from. That's the thing about being young. I couldn't help but be influenced by the things that really touched me, and all those influences gradually become part of the fabric of who you are as a musician.

When I used to write a song with the band, I'd keep it to myself until I really understood it. I'd go to the rehearsal room and play it on acoustic guitar and be like, "This is where the beat is, this is the idea for the bassline." A long time ago, I came to realize that these guys are so much better than me, you know? It's better for me to leave the idea as open as possible. So even if I do understand the structure that exists in my head, I'll try and leave it open to how the guys react to the singing—and they surprise me, bringing things that I never even thought of.

At the beginning, I was very controlling and guarded in a certain way. But, now, things are much more open, and the songs travel in the direction that doesn't have to do with where their influences come from.

What are your listening habits like these days?
If I'm totally honest, the last few years it's been just kind of dabbling. There hasn't been anything that's come along and made me go like, "Wow." The end-of-year polls in 2016, Kendrick Lamar's Damn. was at number one of every poll, and it was my favorite album of the year as well. I thought, "Wow, this is the first time I've ever felt as though I'm part of this." The whole world is listening to this album, and I'm there, and I'm believing in it. The year before, it was probably the Insecure Men record or something—that wasn't listed anywhere. But 2016 was the crescendo of it. The five years leading up to that point, music was so exciting to me. I know it can't be like that all the time, but I wish something would come along and affect me in the way that that music did.

I was really taken aback by the cover of "A Man Needs a Maid" on Distractions. I'm a huge Neil Young fan, so it's always interesting to hear somebody take on that song, which is not always the first choice for people in terms of Neil Young songs.
It's a weird thing. There was a point in my life where I decided, "I'm going to stop listening to Neil Young." That was such a long time ago—maybe sometime in the '90s. I hear him played when I go to people's houses or whatever, but it's just one of those things where his music's already inside me, so it's not something I need to listen to. With that song, I suppose a lot of people say this, but I never really liked the arrangement of it that he recorded, the way it worked with the strings. I wanted to hear it in a simpler sentiment.

I used to go on tour and pack up my little case of CDs, and there was always a Neil Young album in there. There was always a Big Star album, probably a Nick Cave album, probably a couple of Morricone soundtracks. But I need to move on. I can't spend my life listening to Neil Young, and I've felt like that about quite a lot of artists that I was listening to. I decided to kind of move on and start searching in different ways—and to be honest, if I hadn't have made those decisions, then I wouldn't have been open to some of the music that really affected me 15 years later. But, it doesn't mean I love Neil Young any less.

Tell me about how you've witnessed the business aspect of making music change over the years, especially considering the breadth of your career.
I think it's always been changing, but we've always been committed to vinyl. At the end of the '90s, when we made Simple Pleasure, Island Records didn't want to re-press the record on vinyl. For them to sell five thousand more copies or something just wasn't worth it to their state of mind. We were one of the first bands to go to one of those reissue labels that were just starting up then, and then we convinced Island to license the vinyl to a like a third party. Obviously, vinyl is a different thing now—it's a lot more complicated to think about, in lots of ways. But vinyl probably is the only way that you can actually sell some kind of physical product, so it's tough, and everybody's going to tell you it's tough.

The biggest kind of worry to me is young people that want to make music. I just don't know if they can look at it and see it as a viable thing to strive towards and spend time doing. That makes me worry about music in general, I suppose. Even before we made our first single as Tindersticks, it was something that we'd been trying to do for, like, 10 years. We'd not made any money at all, but there was this glimmer of hope about something that we wanted to do ourselves. We can make a 7" single in our kitchen and sell it, you know? From that moment, it was little steps that led us towards making our first album and people turning up at our shows. Now, you're not looking at a vibrant or wide landscape. It's getting kind of narrow, and that's a worrying thing to me.

You mentioned working on the High Life score earlier—obviously you've had a long creative relationship with Claire Denis. When I heard your voice come in at the end of Both Sides of the Blade, it honestly took my breath away a little bit—and it felt nice to hear it too, because your work together has a certain familiarity to it. Tell me about working with her over the years.
I have friends who score movies and TV shows—that's their job—and what they do doesn't have so much resemblance to my relationship with Claire and the way that we work. She's never said to me, "I want music here, and it starts here and finishes here." She's never used any temporary score with me. It's always been, "Here's the script." If it's in French, she has it translated for me. This conversation starts, and you see where it takes you—and that conversation, so far, has been alive.

Each film has asked us to look in different places. Talking about Both Sides of the Blade—the singing part at the end was the easiest part. To make that score during confinement was like how it was for lots of people who attempted to record during that period. I know the Floating Points album was done in the same way, but the actual distance between the orchestra players and us made everything so, so difficult. Recording that score was one of the most difficult and grueling things we ever had to do. But, at the same time, we were lucky, because Claire was like, "This has happened, so I'm going to write this film that's based in an apartment in Paris."

I've learned so much from her, but it's just about trying to tap into what she's interested in really deep down—what the film means to her—and just trying to help her achieve it. I'm just helping her get to where she wants to go, and hopefully offering her some ideas along the way that broadens her ideas for it.

It seems like a very special partnership you guys have creatively, at this point.
It's not something that I fully understand, but it's the same as being in this band. I don't fully understand how it works, but when it does work...like, making Soft Tissue, we didn't go to the studio to be like, "We're going to make a new album and it's going to be like this." It was more that, after the confinement, we didn't get to hang out together, and then after it, time became so pressured. So we wanted to create some time in this small residential studio in Northern Spain just to play music and see what happened.

There are moments when you have an idea and you throw it into a room, and it's like a bomb going off—just the energy between people of what can happen. With a song like "Don't Walk, Run" was very much like that: One minute, it didn't exist at all, and then there was just a very small idea, and you're riding a wave. I don't try and question really how or why that happens, but it really is something when it does happen.